2. Dongle Hardware

FrontlineSMS maintains a list of USB dongles which work with its service. I used a Vodafone branded Huawei E220. Sold as Vodafone K3565
The Raspberry Pi only has 2 USB slots – the dongle was slim enough not to interfere with the other USB cable, but it did mean I could only run either a keyboard or a mouse without using a hub. It’s recommended that you use a powered USB hub – although my keyboard and mouse didn’t seem to draw too much power.

4. Installing Java

The Java install takes about 140MB of disk space. After downloading and extracting FrontlineSMS, I only had about 220MB of free space. I deleted the FrontlineSMS zip file and had 234MB free. Just about enough room!

sudo apt-get install openjdk-6-jdk

Wait several minutes and you’ll be good to go.

5. Running for the First Time

Frontline SMS requires a GUI.

Running a GUI is as easy as typing

startx

The resolution was set at the slightly odd dimensions of 1264*672 – which meant there was a large black border around the screen.

Open a terminal (Start, Accessories, LXTerminal, then type

cd FrontlineSMS-distribution-1.6.16.3
./FrontlineSMS.sh

After several minutes of waiting, FrontlineSMS started!

However, no matter what I tried, I couldn’t get FrontlineSMS to detect the dongle. The OS could see it fine (using “lsusb” and “dmesg”), but it just didn’t appear to be detected by FrontlineSMS.

Hello, did you try to put Android on your Pi and install SMS Gateway app ? SMS Gateway allows you to send SMS by http request, just by getting http://x.x;x.x:9090/sendsms…phonenumber…text…password
I’m really interested by a network SMS gateway, and the easiest way is getting SMS Gateway on a Android device, but don’t want to buy an smartphone, and I search a small device like Pi running Android with GSM possibilities.
I’m interested by your opinion on this idea.

I think you’re probably better off buying a cheap Android phone. A Huawei Blaze is about £40 – including £10 PAYG credit. That’s about the same price as Raspberry Pi and – while not as customisable – is perfect if you want a cheap and fast Android device.

any ideas on the vodafone newer K3770 models? when i dmesg i dont see any modems listed, but i see the usb module listed? i was trying the 2nd approach (since i dont have java installed on my pi – im using the Raspbian “wheezy”).

Hello,
I noticed the comments above are quite old but still give it a go. I have just installed sakis3g and followed all the steps necessary for connecting a SIM800 board to my Raspberry Pi2B. When I run sakis3g to connect to network I press Connect 3G, then Custom tty but I do not get a list of APNs. I am on Three UK, put that in with/without UK but no luck.I can’t seem to get connected, this is the steps that prevents me from connecting. Any ideas? Thanks in advance.

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